Jay Rosenblatt is a local filmmaker who's won an award at the recent Sundance Film Festival for his 30 minute film "Human Remains"--an experimental short showing the lives of 5 infamous cruel dictators doing ordinary things like eating, smoking, drinking, etc. He is in his editing lab in his basement. Photo by Liz Hafalia less

Jay Rosenblatt is a local filmmaker who's won an award at the recent Sundance Film Festival for his 30 minute film "Human Remains"--an experimental short showing the lives of 5 infamous cruel dictators doing ... more

Photo: Liz Hafalia

Image 2 of 3

Jay Rosenblatt is a local filmmaker who's won an award at the recent Sundance Film Festival for his 30 minute film "Human Remains"--an experimental short showing the lives of 5 infamous cruel dictators doing ordinary things like eating, smoking, drinking, etc. He is in his editing lab in his basement. Photo by Liz Hafalia less

Jay Rosenblatt is a local filmmaker who's won an award at the recent Sundance Film Festival for his 30 minute film "Human Remains"--an experimental short showing the lives of 5 infamous cruel dictators doing ... more

Photo: Liz Hafalia

Image 3 of 3

Dictators at Play / Teacher's film on tyrants wins at Sundance

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Jay Rosenblatt of San Francisco is still grinning over winning a big award at the recent Sundance Film Festival -- he grins even though his 30-minute movie, "Human Remains," is a haunting reminder of treachery and horror.

"When they called my name, I have to admit I felt wildly excited," said Rosenblatt, 42, the only Bay Area filmmaker to win an award at Sundance.

His black-and-white experimental film, winner of the Special Jury Award for short films, has almost no commercial prospects. And the next public screening of "Human Remains" won't happen until April at the San Francisco International Film Festival. "That's OK," said Rosenblatt. "I didn't submit it as some kind of resume piece, like so many films at Sundance that are there simply to attract studio people."

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A flurry of interest has come from October Films, Fox Searchlight and other producers that specialize in independent features.

"I think that always happens when you win at Sundance," said Rosenblatt. "They sniff around for new talent. They may even send me scripts to look at, though I really haven't pursued making a feature -- it's not my goal. "Of course, I wouldn't mind being asked," he added.

Nearly 1,500 shorts were submitted to Sundance this year. They were winnowed to 60 selected for final consideration.

"It's not the kind of narrative movie people associate with Sundance," said Rosenblatt, who teaches film at San Francisco State University and the College of San Mateo. He lives in the Castro district.

"My film is more experimental. I wanted in an obtuse way to confront the nature of evil, the banality of evil, so we hear about mundane details of these dictators' lives and their own statements," said Rosenblatt.

"It's as if they had come back from their graves to tell about themselves, never mentioning their public lives or the horrors -- for which they were responsible."

Rosenblatt, maker of eight previous films -- his "The Smell of Burning Ants" won 23 awards at various festivals -- spent nearly three years working on "Human Remains." He got the idea when he happened on a newsreel that showed Hitler eating lunch. "It was such an everyday thing, just a guy eating. But the guy was Hitler. I'm Jewish, and it gave me a chill to think of Hitler doing something we all do."

In the film, Mussolini, a father of five, plays in the back yard with his pet lion and poses with a bowler hat he loved. Stalin notes that he was 5-foot-4 but wore size 11 shoes. Mao proudly admits he was a chain- smoker but suffered from insomnia and constipation.

"I got my information from many books," said Rosenblatt. "And the film footage came from newsreels, other documentaries, film archives, even from educational movies used in schools."

The scenes of the dictators are connected by shots of a man digging with a shovel, which Rosenblatt filmed using an actor in a friend's Oakland yard.

Working in fits and starts over three years, much of the time in his basement editing room, Rosenblatt has no sure accounting of what his prize-winner cost -- "Maybe $20,000 for materials, a lot more for time and equipment."

"It's hard to figure what to do with this type of film because it's not commercial at all," he said. "I'll definitely go on the film festival circuit. Maybe it will show on cable TV. Not that all of it matters that much -- I think of my work as art. Marketing is not my field."